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Her Bad Fortune

Nadya comes to my office in her best dark cherry suit. She comes straightly from a photographer and shows me pictures of herself which the photographer has just taken. One picture is for the resume that she asks me to translate. The other picture is for a marriage agency personal form just in case; it is not what Nadya counts on seriously. First she wishes to offer her resume to some foreign companies though there are not many foreign companies in St. Petersburg that would take an accountant from the street. Though if they even took they would take someone younger and with the knowledge of English. Still one must try everything while looking for work.

She lost her work three months ago. She was very lucky to get the place of the vice-chief accountant of a large factory. It was a rare chance for an engineer of middle age without special education but only three weeks book-keeping courses. When I found out that she had got that work I prondly started to tell everyone that while most engineers could hope for nothing at their bankrupt factories, the lady with whom I had sat at one desk at the book-keeping courses, did not give up, managed to change her profession and to find a place with a good wage.

But she lost it. Formerly she believed that the main factor of success was diligence. Nadya was a very diligent pupil at the courses. She never went out for lunch at the breaks, ate her sandwich just at our desk turning over and over the pages of the lectures. She neither chatted nor giggled during lessons, just looking reproachingly at a merry lady from the front desk and me, who did. She herself tried not to miss even a word of the teacher.

She acted the same way at her work. Her book-keeping was always in an excellent order. Her knowledge of laws and taxes was always updated. She tried her best and demanded the same from others. When it seemed to her that her boss was not enough responsible, Nadya honestly informed him about it, as she piously believed in the predominance of sense of duty over everything.

Her fast discharge ruined that belief. But she still continued to act like previously.

Every morning, not missing one, she visited Unemployment Bureau to look for opportunities. Then she went back home and started to call. Sometimes she put on her best dark cherry suit and went for interviews. She returned back and her son met her in the doorway with a question in his eyes.

«They never refuse at once,» Nadya tells me. «They usually promise to call. They say «We will call you next week,» or «We will surely call you.» But when I call myself they apologize, «Sorry, that place is already unavailable’»

Once or twice however it seemed to her that her diligence would be rewarded again. Nadya came to a company and, while waiting for the boss to invite her, got into a conversation with a lady. The lady was an accountant there, it seemed to Nadya her professional knowledge impressed her colleague. The lady encouraged Nadya and promised to apply for her. The boss was affable, promised to call, but he did not. When Nadya decided to visit that company again the same lady did not even recognize her.

Nadya cannot understand why it all is happening that way, she tries to investigate laws according to which good fortune leaves a person. It seems to her things will change if she learns it.

«In the very beginning of my search I came for an interview together with other candidates,» Nadya says. «It was a place with a good wage, a lot of people with higher economy degrees came there. An elderly lady in a shabby dress, also a candidate, came up to me and said: «Failed again. Can you imagine I am looking for a year yet?»

That woman looked like a real failure!» exclaims Nadya. «I wish I would not talk to her, I am sure it was she who conveyed her bad fortune to me!»

Nadya is looking desperately as if she hopes I will tell that it can’t really be this way;

I am telling her it can’t really be this way, I am telling Nadya I am sure there is neither bad or good fortune, but maybe only unfortunate circumstances. I tell her that currently there is already less opportunities and more accountants than when we finished the courses, that’s the simple material reason why she cannot get a job. But if she has a little bit more patience she would surely be a success. It is only time and patience that is needed. I convince her trying to look honestly into her eyes. She asks me if I really think so, looking at me longingly. I make myself smile with confidence, encouraging her.

I translate her resume, fill in her marriage agency application form, and while filling it in it seems she becomes a little bit livened up, even smiles speaking about her possible future partner, coquettishly tidying her hair, and I notice in sun rays white hair in her hair-do and how worn her best cherry coloured suit is.

I see her off to the door, she seems comforted, thanks me and leaves hopeful.

I close the door, return to the table and am going to continue my work. But I can’t do anything as if something bad settled in my office after her departure.

His Old Red Cat

That Finnish man saw her picture in our personals catalog. She was a thirty year old Russian girl of an average appearance. She wrote in her application form that most of all she wished to take care of somebody and to have children.

He invited her to visit him to Finland, she agreed. She came by train, he met her at the railway station. She had seen his picture while corresponding, still he turned out to be smaller and thinner and his eyes were frightened though he smiled.

He lived in a small one-bedroom apartment in a little town and worked as a milk-man at a large farm. He offered her his bedroom and he himself settled on the sofa in the living room. Every evening he wished her good night, closed the door and never tried either to open it or even to knock. Every morning he left for work when it was dark yet and she heard how he moved about the room trying not to make any noise and cautiously closed the door.

He was very cautious in everything: it seemed to her that he even cared she would not see how much money was in his purse; he tried to open it a way she could not see it and later she herself looked aside when he took his purse out of the pocket. They usually went shopping together in the evenings after his returning from work and he always repeated that prices in Finland were high and one should be economical.

He talked not much. Sometimes she wondered what for he invited her. On weekends they walked to the lake or visited the city. She tried to talk, asked him about personal things, but he was rather evasive and she desperately chatted about herself and could not understand what really he was thinking about.

Once it seemed to her she noticed a real feeling on his face: having entered the market one evening they encountered a black haired woman with a resolute expression on her face talking to a cashier. The girl noticed that the man became tense having seen the lady and tried to pass her faster, hiding his eyes. The woman also looked at them attentively, her eyes narrowed and a sneer flashed through her face.

The girl asked the man about the lady when they got out, but he muttered something and she understood that he preferred she would not continue her questions.

Staying alone at home while he was at work she used to talk with his cat. The man had an old red cat which he did not let out to the street and which slept most of the time on the window sill or looked outside from behind the window. The girl loved cats, she had her own one in Russia. Very often she sat beside the cat, stroked him behind his ear, looked together with him outside the window and told him that his master did not like her, that soon she would leave for Russia and never come back, that she was always unlucky with men and this time she was unlucky too. The cat purred, sympathizing.

The man also loved his cat. Returning from work he firstly used to come up to him, stroked him and asked the girl if the cat ate well. He often consulted with the girl what food would be better to buy for the cat – the girl’s profession was veterinary surgeon and she should know. It seemed to the girl that the cat was the only subject they could easily discuss and when in the evening they both watched TV and petted the cat lying between them on the couch, the girl sometimes thought that one would feel that way having a real family.

Once before her departure the girl was at home as usual. The weather was fine and the girl slightly opened the window, holding the sleeping cat, breathing the fresh spring air.

A lady-neighbour from the next apartment stopped beside the window and started a conversation about the good weather. The girl spoke Finnish not very well and understood not much. Still she understood when lowering her voice the lady started to speak about the man she visited. The lady whispered something about the man’s ex-wife and the girl understanding not very well asked the lady to come in and to repeat.

And having quickly moved to the door and let the lady come in, the girl learned that the man once had an evil wife to whom he left the house of his parents and all his property while leaving, and he himself rented that miserable apartment and had taken with himself only his red old cat.

When the lady mentioned the cat the girl immediately remembered that the window in the room remained opened. She ran back into the room but, alas, the window had flown open by the draught and the cat was absent. The girl looked under the sofa and the bed, ran out into the street and called the cat there but it did not help – the cat disappeared.

She did not know how to tell the man about it. When, blaming herself, she told him as soon as he came in, he did not say anything bad but told the girl that though the cat was never let outside, he hoped that his pet should return. All the evening both the man and the girl walked under the slight rain about the streets around the house and also far away, they called the cat, everything was vain.

Late in the evening when it started already raining heavily the girl stood at the window looking into the darkness and the man sat on the couch in front of an unswitched TV. The girl thought that she brought there only the misfortune, she thought about the red old cat hiding she had no idea where under that heavy rain; she remembered her own cat in Russia, imagined that the same happened with her cat too, thought that very soon she would leave for her cat which quite safely was with her mother but the man would stay alone without even a cat he could take care of and having thought about it she started crying. The man did not move and said nothing, she wished to stop but she could not, and he stood up, came up to her, stood beside for a while and hugged her indecisively.

They both spent that night in her bedroom. He firstly comforted her saying that the cat would return. Later, hugging her tightly, he whispered into her ear that the woman they saw in the market was his ex-wife, that he understood she never loved him but could not understand why she hated him so severely. All their family life she repeated that he was good for nothing and he himself already started to believe in it. After the divorce he preferred to leave her the house and everything only not to communicate any more. But when she somehow found out that he decided to invite a Russian girl, she laughed and she told everybody that Russian girls could be interested in nothing else but his money until they know how little that money is.

He did not wish to believe in all that but still believed, he wished to find good in life but already did not hope, he wished to become happy and could not even try as that evil woman poisoned everything. And the girl also hugged him tightly as if trying to defend, sobbed yet but already smiled and whispered that since that time everything would be okay and there would be no more reason to worry.

The Romantic Interview

I wished to include a romantic interview of one of the ladies into our Finnish marriage catalog, to wake up more romantic feelings in men and to increase the quantity of customers. I asked for this interview one of the girls, a secretary, she refused, said that she was not capable of expressing herself well verbally. Then I asked another girl, a hair-dresser at a famous salon, she also refused, said that too many people knew her here and there, that she preferred to keep silence. Then I asked the third girl, a surgeon. She immediately agreed and came to me just that evening.

She looked a little bit strict but brought a very beautiful picture of herself for the catalog. We sat together on the couch, having coffee, she asked if it was really possible to marry that way, I replied that the percent of marriages was not high, but nobody knew who would be lucky and a romantic interview could help. So we started.

I asked her if there was romance in her previous marriage (she was divorced). She laughed, responded that her ex-husband never understood her and helped not much, he was from people sure in one-two things all their life, she had to study in the university, to look after her little daughter, to work and to cook and to wash his clothes simultaneously, she finally asked her husband to leave.

I asked if there was any romance in her current life. She laughed again, said that that time she was the manager of a department of the hospital, that work took a great place in her life, that she was already capable of doing all the operations being done in the hospital, that she had to work so much with these miserable wages that she had no time for anything else, even for her daughter, and that’s why she started to think about marriage to the west – if she had new children she would devote herself to them having the possibility to live a normal family life at last.

I asked if she really had nobody in her life at least to dream about after the divorce and what was her attitude towards men on the whole that time. She replied that she had a lot of male friends, that she was not able to make friends with women and to chat with them about different rubbish but it was possible to discuss interesting medical cases with her male colleagues or, for example, to discuss works of German psychologist Eric Bern whom she admired. She added that if she regarded men from the point of view of possible future marriage she did not think any more she could be happy in Russia. She said Russian men lost themselves in that disorder, drank much, could not provide the family that’s why she decided to move to the West.

I asked if she thought it could be romantic to have a husband from another country with another language or if she supposed any problems could happen connected with it. She said she did not ever think there could be any problems as the Russians themselves always were the mixture of nationalities, she met her Finnish colleagues and they seemed very sensible and polite.

I asked if she thought she could fall deeply in love with one of her Finnish colleagues for example and maybe it could change all her world-outlook. She said she did not think it was anyhow possible at her age (she was thirty two), the main thing she wished to find was mutual respect and understanding, understanding of the necessity of raising children, mutual help and support.

I wondered if she really did not believe in love in the sense that it was something one could not imagine and predict in advance and she replied that she really did not understand what that concept meant, that what really existed in the world from her point of view was common sense and expediency and it was of course much more reasonable to live not all alone, but with a family, to be supported by someone and to support them to make life easier for both.

I asked what she thought about the deepest grief which a person having lost his beloved spouse could feel till the end. She replied that if people lose each other in a younger age they could comfort themselves very fast having found somebody else. As for old people they really could not be on their own yet, that’s why they grieved so deeply, that was a reasonable medical explanation.

I asked then if she really hoped that such an interview could help her to find some romantic partner. She smiled, stood up, said that I might write what I wished, thanked, parted and left and I stayed in my office alone.

Just that moment my Finnish partner called and I told him about the romantic interview still being absent and being in a hurry to complete the catalog my partner offered to place there more pretty faces instead of the interview then.

And we did so. And a very beautiful picture of this young lady-surgeon that she brought for the interview was placed just on the cover. She did not at all look strict in the picture, on the contrary, there was something very romantic in the expression of her eyes and maybe it awoke lot of romantic aspirations in the men and the quantity of our customers was really increased.

The Island

Natasha lived with her little daughter in a St. Petersburg communal flat together with many other neighbours. The block was situated in one of St. Petersburg’s noisy avenues. Windows of three rooms faced the avenue where trucks and trams rolled day and night. The fourth room faced a green quiet yard but an old woman living there though being lucky to have a good room had a bad character, eavesdropped on conversations, gossiped and grumbled all the time about other neighbours’ kids making noise in the hall or about the family on duty that did not make weekly cleaning satisfactory.

The flat was crowded with so many people. Natasha’s daughter and neighbours’ kids always ran and cried in the hall. Bicycles and wash-basins hung on the walls, sometimes there was a queue to the bathroom or to the cooker to cook. The young couple with two kids felt overcrowded most of all in their single room, Natasha knew these young people hoped only that when sooner or later the grumpy old woman or the old man from another room left for a mercy house or even further their rooms would become free and it would be possible to occupy them as there was the appropriate right according to the law.

The old man was a former sea captain. That neighbour was Natasha’s good friend – he was always glad to see both Natasha and her daughter in his room. They liked to visit him for tea in the evenings. There were pictures of ships and boats on the walls of his room, big tropical shells and overseas souvenirs on the shelves of his old furniture. Natasha’s daughter liked to play with the sea shells, and had already broken some of them accidentally but the old captain did not curse, he used to say that it was for good luck and let the girl continue examining the shells and put them to her ear, listening to the noise of the sea.

The old captain survived a stroke. His legs worked poorly, he moved slowly just about the flat, the noisy avenue below was all that remained from his so broad in former times world. When the sun started to appear in his room in the spring he used to open the window and put his face under the sun rays, closed his eyes and imagined that he was at sea again and the roar of trucks and trams below was the roar of the sea waves. His wife died long ago, he had no children, his niece came once a week, brought him some food. Natasha also helped, bought him bread and milk, washed, cleaned his room. The old man’s niece always convinced him to enter the mercy house but Natasha, being aware what mercy houses in Russia really were, told his niece every time that the old man was quite alright on his own and she was there each moment if something was necessary for him.

Natasha was a biologist, she loved nature, plants, animals, insects – everything that lived its own life in the world. In former times she worked in the Botanical Academy, but after perestroyka the wages there became smaller and smaller till she was working only for bus fare. Natasha started to work as a trade agent of a cosmetic company: visiting offices and different institutions she sold cremes and lipsticks, it was not easy having a child, the old man helped her, watching her girl when she slept, feeding and playing with her after she woke up, giving Natasha the possibility to run about the city with a heavy bag full of products from which she tried to sell as much as she could.

Natasha’s parents lived far away, nobody except the old captain could help her. Looking after her daughter, selling cosmetics for a living she had no time for any personal life outside the flat, all her personal contacts besides casual customers were made of the flat’s inhabitants. The young couple, though close to her by their age, were not close by spirit. They were too economical, bought only wholesale, talked how to spend money for useful things, not in a silly way just for pleasure.

Natasha’s conversations with the old captain were different. The old man often told her about his sea voyages, about exotic archipelagos that his ship used to visit, where it was warm all the time, and there were tropical sunsets, blue birds and beautiful silver fish. Natasha told the captain about her unhappy marriage when her husband left her just before the childbirth; later he neither saw his daughter, nor helped. Natasha guessed for the future and did not expect anything good as there was nothing good in the past. The old captain smiled, clapped her shoulder and used to say that one could never know what would be around the corner, that her young age was happiness itself. As to him, he was already happy just with the walls of his room, with his pictures, with the sun rays from the window, with their quiet conversations, with her daughter’s sleep that he guarded, even with the neighbours’ quarrel in the kitchen. Any trifle belonging to life could be appreciated in his age.

Once, distributing her cosmetics, Natasha found herself in a marriage agency office and while the lady manager was examining Natasha’s lipsticks and perfumes, she, in turn, gave Natasha application forms of Americans wishing to get acquainted with Russian girls. Looking through biographies and pictures Natasha suddenly came across the name of the archipelago the old captain told her about. She saw the picture of a smiling man, it was written there that he was an American engineer working on the island, living there with his little daughter and looking for a loving wife and a kind mother for his child.

Wondering why she was doing it, Natasha copied his address. In the evening she told the captain about it: it was not easy for her to explain to the old man what the marriage agency really meant as having no possibility of going out he missed many features of new post-Soviet life. Nevertheless, smiling and joking in his own inoffensive manner, the old man encouraged Natasha to write. He remembered that once his ship was really being unloaded in that archipelago, Soviet sailors were not allowed to enter the shore, still they all had time to notice how beautiful those islands were and how kind and careless the local people were there.

And Natasha wrote her letter and started to wait for the reply. She wrote that maybe the wish to make their children happy could draw the American and her together. And it really seemed to her that something should change in her life finally, and while she waited for the American’s reply her conversations with the old captain were rolling around that island.

She did not seriously admit the possibility of moving there, but she just imagined palms and exotic birds she somehow touched by her letter and thought how many wonderful things were there in the world she had no possibility to know. And the old captain thought, looking at her dreamy face, that if she really moved to the island he should certainly leave his room for the mercy house where his own life area would be narrowed to a bed in a crowded ward. He knew that both old men in deep sclerosis and those like him were kept together there. And the old captain already started to consider what two or three books and what pictures he would take with him and wondered if it would be allowed to open windows there, if he would be able to feel yet the warmth of the sun rays.

But the American did not reply. Natasha could not know that the mother of his daughter, who betrayed and left him, came back and he forgave her and stopped his search which he really started in order to prove to his disloyal wife that he did not suffer at all and did not need her either.

After two months of expectations Natasha stopped waiting for his reply. The young couple who also knew everything from the gossiping old woman were disappointed as they very much looked forward both for Natasha’s and the old man’s departure to occupy their rooms.

Since that time Natasha was usually silent while she had their evening tea, she sat thinking about all the hardships and problems awaiting ahead. Looking at his pictures the old man thought that he would really give up everything to see a smile on her serious face. And he comforted her saying that something good would surely happen in her life very soon and the only thing one should do was to hope for better.